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Monday, November 16, 2015

Mr. President, Be Mindful of Your Vanity
Vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
Bible proverb

I listened to your explanations at your Turkey press conference about your multiple convoluted strategies for coping with ISIS after the Paris terrorist attack.

Mr. President, be mindful or your ideological vanity. I realize you are a proud person. You should be. Americans voted twice for you as their president, on the basis of your inspirational message about hope and change.

But be mindful that not everybody thinks as you do.

Not everybody agrees your multiple incremental strategies for dealing with ISIS ( you used the words “strategy” or “strategies” at least 30 times in your remarks) about “containing”, “degrading,” or “squeezing” ISIS. These multiple strategies do not constitute a single overall strategy. What you’re doing isn’t working, and your local political opponents and your international allies know it. You kept saying we will not change our strategy. What strategy and which strategy? Why not an understandable single strategy - liking declaring war against ISIS or simply destroying their oil fields - the source of their revenue?

Not everybody agrees that your statement about not changing your “strategies’ as a consequence of what happened in Paris makes much sense. When what you’re doing doesn’t work, you change.

You don’t remain “shiftless,” by saying what you’re doing needs more time., and you will not shift your strategies. You don’t say, ”If there’s a good idea out there, then we’re going to do it,” when you don’t listen to the ideas of your military advisors, whom you overrule every turn.

Not everyone agrees with your strategy of setting up hypothetical “strawmen,” who you say things they never really said, such as sending in 50,000 to 100,000 “boots-on the ground,” to win the war on ISIS, or deporting all Syrian immigrants back to Syria or going to war with Russia.

Other people have constructive ideas, and you don’t summarily dismiss them because you don’t agree with them. Don’t caste blame on others for their failure of your policies. Don’t be a scold, be bold and bring them into your fold. Listen to your fellow patriotic Americans, who think differently than you do.

Not everybody thinks all Muslims are terrorists, but to date, most terrorists have been Muslim. People are mystified why you are so reluctant to condemn terrorists by calling them ”Islam terrorists,” when, in fact, they are just that.

It is all right to sympathize with the majority of Muslims. It is not all right to speak up against Muslim leaders who fail to condemn terrorists, or to Muslim Americans who pledge allegiance to Allah rather than the United States of American.

Mr. President, “compassion” and “concern for the rights of others” has limits. Not everybody agrees we should take in an unlimited number of Syrian and other immigrants from countries where ISIS is active when those immigrants may contain many sympathetic to ISIS terrorists. Not everybody in the U.S. agrees that generous progressive welfare benefits work when violence and poverty are worse in those U.S. cities controlled by Democrats.

Be open-minded, Mr. President. You represent all the people, not just those who agree with your point of view.

The Health Reform Maze

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Book Description: In this first book in a series of four, Richard L. Reece, MD. provides a unique view of the roll out, and run up, of the Affordable Care Act. Reece shows in this book the progress and facets of ObamaCare's marketers and messengers, as the day approached for the launch of health insurance exchanges - the single most public and problematic portion of the new law. This is a must read for anyone who wants to chronicle this attempt to organize more than one-sixth of the U.S. economy by adding layers of federal government control and regulations.

Reece has been writing about U.S. health care for more than 45 years. His knowledge and experience, added to his keen intellect and gift of subtle humor, make this book a valuable part of anyone's collection.